Please call Senator Kathy Sheran at 651-296-6153.
You could say, “Please schedule a hearing for Senator Chris Eaton’s GAAIN bill, Senate File 1426, before the policy committee deadline. There are too many people in this state suffering with nothing, and the bill deserves a hearing.”

The GAAIN bill would make it so that people have no income and who are looking for work can get General Assistance. This would include families who have hit the 5-year limit on welfare and also people whose unemployment insurance has timed out.

April 1 is the deadline for our GAAIN bill to be heard in the Senate Committee on Health, Human Services and Housing. The GAAIN bill deserves the respect to be granted a hearing in policy committee this year. Scaredy-cat politicians whine about how this is a “short session,” or that are “zero targets” , but we shouldn’t cave to their attempts to manipulate us into giving up.

People’s basic survival should not be held hostage to politicians who don’t have the courage to use the $900+ million surplus to get us, our family members, friends and our community members out of desperate poverty. They are hearing plenty of bills to give big bucks to agencies that will maybe ‘help’ us, and to other things that actually harm our communities (like more prisons). But what people who have no cash ‘really need’ is money in our pockets, now!

Please call Senator Sheran at 651-296-6153 and ask her to hear the GAAIN bill.

“Short session” – means the legislative session started late. They also say it is “not a budget year,” but yet they are talking about giving tax breaks to the rich and spending more money on prisons.

“Zero targets” – means that the ‘leaders’ of the House and Senate will be saying that the state
money allowed for Health and Human services will not go up this year. But for years, they have been robbing the poor. We need the hearing in Senator Sheran’s policy committee to show them what the dire need is.